What We Can Learn from the Flawed FAFSA Rollout

When Frank Arce reflects on the troubled rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form this past year, the word “confusion” immediately comes to mind. “No one knew what was going on,” the assistant dean of admissions and financial aid at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) explains. Arce, who has more than 20 years of experience in financial aid and enrollment management, says the U.S. Department of Education failed to take advantage of the feedback that poured in about the changes, including concerns about the scale of the undertaking. It was the largest redesign of the form and its underlying systems in decades.

“In my opinion, I don't think that they listened to the financial aid community as much as they could have,” he says, “and they really thought that they could continue on with the aggressive revamping that they wanted to do, and obviously they experienced a lot of challenges and hiccups through the process.”

Prospective and current undergraduate and graduate students faced delays, technical glitches, and aid miscalculations with the new FAFSA. Completion rates have improved since the Education Department worked to correct major issues with the form, but still have not matched pre-rollout numbers. Arce’s advice about how to improve things moving forward? “I think what's really important is listening to the stakeholders that engage with the financial aid process on a daily basis, be that financial aid administrators, be that students and families,” he says.

Timelines are shifting again this fall. Traditionally, the federal aid form is made available on October 1, but the Education Department recently announced a beta testing period for the 2025–2026 cycle which will begin next month and promised that the FAFSA form will be available to everyone on or before December 1. It says the testing plan is a result of listening “carefully to students, families, institutions, and other stakeholders about their experiences with the 2024–25 FAFSA rollout.”

Fraught as the new FAFSA rollout has been this year, Mandy Savitz-Romer, a senior lecturer at HGSE who writes and speaks frequently about college readiness and school-based counseling, says there are valuable lessons to be learned from the experience for anyone who helps students prepare for college, including families, counselors, educators, and community-based organizations:

1) Be aware of developmental factors for students in college preparedness work.

Much of Savitz-Romer’s work is focused on what she describes as the developmental components of college readiness, and she says she worries that when some people think about FAFSA completion, they think about it in a limited way and may miss the bigger and more complicated picture of all the steps that precede it. Messages about open financial pathways to college need to be shared early and often, she says, because students begin developing mindsets about their future, positive or otherwise, from a young age.

“Students don't fill out a FAFSA if they don't aspire to go to college. They don’t fill out the FAFSA if they think they can't get into college. They don't fill out the FAFSA if they think they're not going to get any money,” Savitz-Romer explains. “FAFSA completion efforts that are really about the completion part of it and that don't take into account all the things that need to happen before that, I think are going to fall short.”

2) Repair the damage that has been done. 

There is much work to do with students and families to restore confidence in the financial aid process. “The narrative that emerged this past academic year was that the better FAFSA rollout was really flawed,” Savitz-Romer explains. “Kids heard that, families heard that. They said, ‘Why bother, it’s too much work.’ Or they started it and grew frustrated. So, the work going forward is going to have to be a bit of a cultural shift where we engage families in getting them on board.”

3) Make good use of the summer to expand college access and enrollment. 

The Education Department made extra funding available to school districts, state agencies, and community-based organizations, to the tune of $50 million this year, for what Savitz-Romer calls a “FAFSA Completion Palooza.” Some districts applied for funds to pay their own school counselors to work over the summer to try and reengage students who had become frustrated with the process, she explains. The schools partnered with summer enrichment programs and held barbecues, while other agencies and organizations used cellphone texting platforms, billboards, media strategies, and picnics in their ramped-up student outreach efforts, Savitz-Romer says. In the future she hopes there will be a way to continue with many of the creative strategies that were used to reach families. “Summer is an important time. It's an important time because there is summer melt and because some students change their mind about going to college late in the academic year and it can't be that the only supports that are available end in June.” 

4) Use data-drive practices to help with FAFSA completion.

This year’s summer’s outreach efforts were aided by a push over the past decade to use data to drive FAFSA completion, according to Savitz-Romer. “In many places around the country you have these very robust data systems that can tell a school, to the student level, who hasn't completed it,” she explains. During the summer work, counselors and community-based organizations were able to track down individual students who had not filed their FAFSA forms. “I think going forward, we're going to see a lot more of that and much more very intentional data tracking and identification,” says Savitz-Romer. There is much to learn from states that have led the way in raising completion rates too, such as Tennessee and Louisiana, she adds. 

5) Dedicate time during the school day to help students navigate the college application process and complete the FAFSA.

Savitz-Romer thinks that schools will need to be “very mindful of how they're talking to kids about college-going” and should capitalize further on the academic year by engaging in events with families and dedicating time during the school day to help students with the process. “The FAFSA is one piece of that,” she explains, but “it is not the only piece.”